Bitcoin ConF A Nothing Burger
I've all but stopped following the conference because it's been a circle jerk of self-congratulations and very little news. Apart from the open-source stage which I still think does good work and that's where the innovation lies, the rest is all pretty much noise.
I like to look at these things from a normie, no coiner point of view and I have to say I'd be put off by this bunch and wouldn't be very bullish after these talks and announcements.
Thankfully these people and companies have no influence on bitcoin and if they all defected tomorrow, the network would keep going, which is why I believe in bitcoin so much.
So out of the entire conference was there anything to talk about? Hardly, I could literally only find 2 things worth mentioning and that was a stretch.
Nation state adoption
Last year we had the big news of El Salvador and today they offer their citizens the opportunity to live, work and save in bitcoin if they so choose. This is not to say it's been a smooth ride and if you hear the accounts of Salvadorians, they'll tell you the Chivo wallet hasn't been the best bitcoin experience. Leaving people with a half-baked solution and then moving on to other countries just seems to me like you're in it for yourself.
This time around we see Samson Mow, pushing for adoption in multiple geographies namely, Prospera in Honduras, Madeira of Portugal, and Mexico.
Mexico would obviously be a big win, it's a massive country with a largely working-class, growing middle class, relations with the US, and diaspora all over North and South America. But from the announcement, it was a bill pushed by 1 politician that didn't look very confident.
As for the rest, I see them as nothing burgers, and just something to have an announcement. I would have much preferred to hear how work had been done to improve the bitcoin experience for Salvadorians rather than trying to dump a half-baked product on more people.
Shopify and POS systems
Jack Mallers, CEO of Strike, announced a partnership with Shopify, NCR, and the Blackhawk Network – the three global payment-system leaders to enable people to spend bitcoin with them via Strike. Now, this is great for Strike and for Lightning Liquidity but as for bitcoin adoption, I don't see it yet.
I get the idea of being able to spend bitcoin, would I like it to be more seamless sure, but if tax laws and legal tender laws aren't adjusted it still makes it an inefficient method of payment.
The positive I think for me is that newly bitcoin wealthy people will be encouraged to spend their bitcoin, and it will move to companies who hopefully don't want it on their balance sheet and dump it for others to pick up.
Nothing going on
Other than that, there was nothing worth mentioning, just a bunch of people shouting bitcoin and larping because they haven't had a chance to get out of the house much after lock downs.
Have your say
What do you good people of HIVE think?
So have at it my Jessies! If you don't have something to comment, "I am a Jessie."
Let's connect
If you liked this post, sprinkle it with an upvote or esteem and if you don't already, consider following me @chekohler and subscribe to my fanbase
| Safely Store Your Crypto | Deposit $100 & Earn $10 | Earn Interest On Crypto |
|---|---|---|
 |  |  |
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Very accurate description. The usual Instagram influencers were there and the best shots I saw were of the fancy cars outside. Otherwise it looked like a borefest compares to the pool parties at the Miami Winter Music Conference.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Yeah it just makes bitcoin look stupid, like its all about making money and opulence, rather than financial freedom and driving change in the world
Glad I've got you to do the summary for me. All sounds very dull. 😂
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Was just rehashing a lot of the same talking points of last year and influencers trying to sell their podcast and books, very little innovation.
apart from the open-source section which had a bunch of cool stuff going on
well that's encouraging at least. 😊
I don't want to sound pessimistic but I don't think Bitcoin is the network to scale for micropayments... for a country to use Bitcoin as day-to-day currency transactions would need to be verified outside the main chain, only way to make it fast enough without changing Bitcoin to the point of being unrecognizable. But parallel chains...I think more testing needs to be done as far as security goes.
This is a fact. I own a Facebook group for the Chivo App with some 50k members...too many problems with this app. Not just that, a bunch of money went "missing" during the Bitcoin distribution, I think every citizen was supposed to get $20 bucks or something. Well...the number of people saying they went to claim theirs and the app told them someone else had claimed it was concerning to me.
Something else that has been worrisome is that apparently businesses are being forced to accept Bitcoin? I'm not so sure I'm behind that measure.
Time will tell what will happen as far as state-wise adoption, but honestly I think they'd probably be better off using the HIVE blockchain instead of Bitcoin at this point. I fear that when the Bitcoin network gets congested it's going to make for very bad publicity as to the utility of the asset and capability of the network.
Thanks for sharing your insights on Bitcoin22!
I agree Chivo was rolled out with a lack of infrastructure and education because they wanted to push this PR move an get the bill signed into law so incentives and reality was not aligned and I agree there has been such a bad user experience for many but did we ever expect a government to pull off anything?
I agree that lightning was thrown as a solution when it wasn't ready, things like Turbo channels, channel factories, dual funded channels are not smooth enough for people to use yet so they don't even know what method they are using, the tools are still being built out and I feel it was premature, but its not up to me to decide, El Salvador is now the test case and they are exposing a lot of issues which is great
If it were any other chain it would have been exposed majorly and fell apart, with scale comes security issues galor.
I think its a good thing Chivo doesn't work properly so it pushes users away from custodial services to be more independent, id rather people hold their fund themselves than through Chivo. I know its' not easy for many but they have to learn, if you don't know how to use a smartphone you also had to learn now it seems like a normal thing but it took time
I would disagree regarding HIVE, 20 witnesses cannot offer the protection needed to safeguard any reasonable amount of money, the only reason HIVE doesn't get attacked is because the money isn't worth the attack. If HIVE were to be in the 10s of billions, it would fall over in a heartbeat as we saw with Justin Sun throwing a few million at steem and it was over. There is soo much attack surface in DPOS.
I agree. But with the right incentives 20 witnesses can be turned into 2,000 with more ease than having to fork Bitcoin to change pretty much anything that needs changing...
If HBD↑20% has demonstrated anything so far is the ability this chain has to adapt, #TronGate is also evidence. Adaptation is necessary for the survival of any blockchain or really anything IRL.
Good conversation! Glad to find people who actually know what they're talking about and consider the security of these deterministic mechanisms offered by blockchain tech.
That is incorrect because you only need to co-opt the witnesses with the most stake and the others won't matter. So I only need to either get 51% of the node operators on my side or buy enough stake to flush them out, or buy enough stake that with the node operators I have in my pocket I can do what I want.
Let's say EL Salvador would use HIVE, do you really think the US can't acquire a majority stake and destroy the network? DPOS validators are a systematic risk at scale and are different to bitcoin node operators who all share the consensus of the rules equally.
I do agree there are security advantages to utilizing PoW, will a PoW only system ever be scalable enough to satisfy the needs of a nation? Maybe a hybrid like Dash, but PoW only? Without parallel chains? Do we really know whether DPoS is any less secure than whatever method is utilized to get Bitcoin involved in mass micropayments? I guess time will tell!
I wouldn't think fiat is a safer choice than HIVE, that's the context of my comments.
The reality of it is the US can acquire majority of the actual mines where the materials to create mining equipment are extracted. The US can also pass regulations taking away incentives from crypto miners...not just the US, any country really. I think it's already happening in Argentina where miners are having to pay higher costs than any other business consuming the same amount of electricity.
Also, bitcoin can easily be flagged. If no one wants to accept your bitcoin because the government says they're dirty what good are they for then?
As to how to address the problem of being able to track down HIVE witnesses and bribe them...I guess all these great minds are going to have to keep thinking about ways to minimize this vulnerability. 😉
I think that people have this idea that throughput has to be on the basechain but can anyone name any form of money that has done this in the last 5000 years?
All money scales in layers, the internet itself scales in layers, we're not running the whole internet through TCP/IP, the base chain is for final settlement and disagreements.
I don't see Lightning or Liquid as parachains, I see them as second layers since they don't have a native token, they can only use what has been pegged into their system and then apply different rulesets. You'll see something like Ethereum using remora chains like Poly and Arbitrum, which all come with their own series of vulnerabilities
Again bitcoin is different if lets say the US can capture a large amount of hashing power, it only increases the overall strength of the network and it will cost even more to increase a percentage point of hashing power to reach the 51% attack.
To acquire a massive amount of mining power would either trigger a price rise in equipment or be seized which is an early warning to the network Any actor that the network of 100k nodes are watching can also choose to reject their blocks, so there are failsafes in place
As for bitcoin being dirty, you can submarine swap it, use a stealth address, coinjoin, coinswap or payjoin to obfuscate the histroy of the UTXO, but people still have the right to not accept it like they do any money.
As for HIVE you're using a static address with no way to obfuscate history so that already ruins the fungibility of tainted coins.
Great chatting with you, its nice to see people wanting to have honest discussions and not just shilling.
I agree with pretty much everything. I imagine each country using one or several chains to account for monetary transactions, maybe even with different consensus mechanisms,but I would hate to see them all settle on a single chain. Competition will keep development healthy, I hope. Probably the greatest defense is in diversification, which is supposed to be the foundation of blockchain security in its simplest form. As long as there's competition and transparency I can sleep a little easier.
Yup! But I feel that at least it's easier to communicate foul play. There are social consequences to misbehavior and the game of witnessing is partly a game of popularity. Assume there is a wealth war between Pepsi and Coke, we might not be able to see it was actually those companies that purchased the stake and are vote-fighting each other, but we can perhaps tell the conflict is in relation to the subject of Coke and Pepsi or the general subject of beverages. To hide your intentions you need a bunch of stake and different accounts. There are people or entities who have a special interest in their interests remaining anon...this attempt to obfuscate could translate to more demand for HIVE's native tokens.
How could I denounce someone misbehaving in Bitcoin? "Wallet 1Gndajg736hbsd72836dgd466GGG6 at blockheight..." It's easier to get a result stating that "HIVE user @employ might be spamming about the Blockchain Jobs community check his blog to confirm."
In the first scenario people like you or me might be able to intervene, understand at least what needs intervention...on the second scenario a mob could go after @employ real quick even if there isn't a single influential staker available and willing to disincentivize abusive behavior.
Mob/cancel culture is not a good culture, that's another vulnerability considering peer pressure is a real problem and people rarely stop to analyze anything...but I take some comfort in the fact that at least if people fight/argue on top of HIVE the evidence will remain in a more accessible format to the general public and we might be able to learn more from whatever mistakes are made.
I can see that happening, each country will choose the option they like best, and they will pay the price for their decisions, the same way individuals will by choosing which network they want to use. I can see a small country running on a channel factory alone or being a federation member of liquid
I just think the further you stray from bitcoin the more likely you'll end up trying to benefit from seignorage in either issuing a token or co-opting a centralized token, so you just going back to fiat.
The way I see it is everyone deserves financial privacy because none of us can decide what is moral and just, those are subject to moral relativism, suppose my religion is now illegal my money can now be seized. Suppose a mother steals to keep her child fed, her stealing is condemned but the stealing her government does isn't?
To treat everyone as guilty until decided innocent by a central authority doesn't sit with me and shaming innocent people because someone might use the network for crime is just a non-starter for me
Yes, you can dox the public address, block height, and UXTO, but as I mentioned Submarine swaps, and other methods can break the heuristics, something you cannot do on other chains. In fact, I could broadcast that UTXO to an HTLC on lightning and be using that money without you seeing it being moved on the base chain.
You could fix spam on Hive by adding fees on-chain or adding a slash function but this can be abused the same way downvoting can, which is why I prefer the fee structure
Unfortunately, certain lessons need to be learned by experience.
So true! Thanks for preaching the truth and not be a moonboy ;)
Lol yeah bitcoiners were meant to be critical thinkers seems like theres a lot of sheeple just yelling bitcoin but don't understand it, its kind of embarrasing